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Oil Pickles

Cucumbers pickled in oil, celery seed, mustard seed, onion, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Oil Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cucumbers

  1. Combine cucumbers and salt in a bowl, weigh them down, and let sit for 6 hours without rinsing.

Assemble and store

  1. Add olive oil, celery seed, mustard seed, and chopped onion to the cucumbers.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar and stir well.

  3. Transfer to a stone jar and weigh down. This will keep without sealing if made with pure cider vinegar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery body of the pickle that the brine penetrates.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and seasoning the pickle.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the vegetables and carrying the spice flavors.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp aroma and flavor as the seeds soften in the brine.

The step that matters

Salting the cucumbers without rinsing. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers by osmosis, which firms their texture. Rinsing before the vinegar is added would wash off salt and change both the flavor and the brine balance.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, olive, celery, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, celery, mustard, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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